


Winter Winds

by bodysnatch3r



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Slow Build, big dumb dorks being big dumb dorks and that'S IT, dwarves and elves are friends, like not even slow build this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 04:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodysnatch3r/pseuds/bodysnatch3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penn University professor Thorin Oakenshield is as busy as can be- but he always takes time to order something at the Misty Mountains Café just around the corner (soy vanilla late, hold the whipped cream). The fact that he's been spending more and more time there obviously has nothing to do with the fact that the new barista working there also happens to be very nice, very likeable and very, very attractive (although Thorin isn't all too fond of his countless tattoos).<br/>This might possibly, maybe, be a little bit of a problem (sort of).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Winds

It's raining.

He doesn't like it.

He doesn't like autumn, it glues itself to his mood and makes everything he touches gloomy and sticky and grey, the same grey that's currently vomiting out of the sky and crashing onto the asphalt in front of him. Professor Oakenshield huffs and puffs and shuffles his feet, burying his hands as deep as he can in his pockets and narrowing his eyes at the merciless clouds overhead.

“You all right there, prof?”

He glances to the side and recognizes one of his students (Bilbo Baggins, a tiny first-year boy with big brains and a passion for Middle English) holding an umbrella, ready to leave the safety of the university museum's secondary entrance's doorway. There's a puddle right in front of them.

“Yes. I'm just not that much of a fan of... rain.” Thorin quietly answers, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Baggins smirks and fixes the strap of his bag so it doesn't weight too bad on his left shoulder, “Do you have an umbrella?” he asks.

Oakenshield catches himself absent-mindedly staring at the puddle and the way the water shimmers when drops hit it, and just nods. Eye contact is brief and his student smiles and shakes his head before opening his red umbrella and stepping in under the rain.

“Well, see you next Tuesday, prof.”

Thorin awkwardly waves at him and gathers up the courage to open his own umbrella- an old blue thing that used to belong to his sister before she moved to London (he takes a mental note to call her that weekend and wish her a happy birthday) and step into the rain. He bravely avoids the puddle, and makes his way across the small garden.

* * *

The café is considerably warmer, compared to the horrifying and humid outside world. Thorin picks an armchair furthest from the door and sets down his bag, pulls out a copy of James G. Frazer's “The Fear Of The Dead In Primitive Religions” and lets his soy latte warm his hands a little.

There's a burst of laughter coming from the other side of the room, behind the register. Thorin looks up for a second from his book and sees the new barista chuckle away at one of professor Thranduil Greenleaf (head of research staff at the Morris Arboretum)'s probably painstakingly corny jokes. The Misty Mountains Café has the luck of being right next to Penn University- usually, it's a hustle and bustle of students, researchers and professors, and today is no different. Greenleaf pays for his scone and leaves in the still pouring rain, giving Thorin the unfortunate chance to give an awkward, long stare at the newcomer. Tauriel, a feisty art school girl with bright green eyes and dyed red hair had made his coffee, so he hadn't noticed him before.

He happens to be tall- probably taller than Thorin (and Thorin isn't exactly _tiny_ ), definitely well built and covered (literally _covered_ ) in tattoos. A helix piercing shines for a moment in the light as he puts away some bills, humming to himself, and then he looks up. Thorin, of course, takes about a millisecond too long to avert his gaze, and buries his nose back into his book.

( _His eyes are grey-blue_ , he thinks, _Jesus Christ his eyes are grey-blue_.)

* * *

“He's not even gay.”

Thorin tells himself this as he stands in front of the faculty staff's bathroom mirror. “He's not even gay, and I shouldn't even care.”

(The main problem is that he does care, a lot, and it's all horribly ridiculous, because they've never even exchanged a word that wasn't Thorin mumbling for a soy latte, _hold the whipped cream please, thank you, here's your change_ , and shuffling over to his usual armchair in a cloud of pure embarrassment and absolute awkwardness).

“Who's not even gay?” Greenleaf asks, stepping in. He's wearing what can only be described as a poison green pair of pants- on his scrawny, bony legs, they look near terrifying. Thorin stares at them for a second, baffled.

“No... one's not even gay.”

Thranduil gives him a look that spells out “I am fully aware that you are completely bullshitting me but I will spare you any and all observations for the sake of your dignity” and candidly replies, “Just so you know, I don't mind.”

Thorin stares at him and blinks from behind his glasses, "Mind what?"

Thranduil scoffs, grants him one of his ice-cold, knowing, sarcastic smiles and as he closes a bathroom stall behind him replies: "That you're gay."

* * *

"So what is it about this place that always keeps you coming back, huh? Is it our scones?"

Thorin chokes on his drink. The barista is wiping down the table across from him, eyebrow arched as he waits for an answer. 

"You all right there?"

"I'm... fine." Oakenshield mumbles, wishing he hadn't magically de-aged to being an awkward seventeen year old facing their first crush in the space of three weeks but Gosh, that barista is so _maddeningly_  cute. Maybe a little bit more than  _cute_. He thinks  _hot_ might describe him better, but he's almost forty. _Hot_ is a teenagers' term, he's an adult for God's sake, an adult who is helplessly crushing on a tall, buff, terrifying, tattooed _monster_. Thorin buries his nose in Ori Ribnick's essay and wishes for a trapdoor to magically appear and let him fall through to somewhere where no one can ever find him, like Tierra del Fuego, or, alternatively, the firey depths of Hell.

Tauriel observes their antics from over the bean grinder and smirks to herself. 

"He likes you." she later tells Dwalin (that's his name, a tiny detail Thorin's never really bothered to check- or rather, he's been much too terrified to ask) as they're closing up shop. She's mopping the floor, he's rinsing the coffee pots.

He shrugs. "Don't be ridiculous."

" _Excuse me_? Have you  _seen_ the way he acts around you?"

"I'm intimidating. You know, big guy, tattoos, bald head-" 

She stops to lean on the broom, frowning at him.

" _What_?"

"Yeah, right, mhm. He looks like a _teenager on his first date_. No, not even on his first date. On his first crush. He is literally _pining_ -"

"Tee, I'm _intimidating_. Besides, I even doubt he's gay."

She cups her hands around her mouth, "He has a  _crush on you_." she barks, playfully annoyed.

* * *

Thorin frowns at the papers in front of him and sighs. His neck hurts, and so do his eyes.

He slips his glasses off and furrows his brow, squeezing his eyes shut in the process. It's late- almost six PM- and he's nowhere done. Some part of his exhausted brain also warns him that the place is unnaturally quiet. Thorin looks up, as if startled, and finds out the coffee shop is.

Completely empty, chairs turned up on the tables, pastries stored away, coffee machines switched off.

He stares at the empty table across from him and blinks a few times. It's out of focus.

“I wasn't going to say anything, mainly because you were completely engrossed and I thought it would be rude for me to interrupt, but I'm closing up in ten minutes.”

His head turns sharply towards whomever has talked and he squints at them, unable to see them clearly. He rubs his eyes and blinks, squints again. There's a second of embarrassed silence from the person (he can see a vague blurry figure leaning against the counter) he's talking to, and then:

“Your... your glasses?”

“Huh?” Thorin asks, before his exhausted brain kicks back into gear and he remembers there's a _reason_ he can't see anything, and he hastily rams his glasses back onto his nose. The world magically comes back into view, and so does the person talking: it's the barista, leather jacket, head tilted to the side, arms crossed, tattoos bleeding from what Thorin can see of his neck up the back of his head, up to his scalp. Internally, it makes him cringe. (But he can't help but think that Gosh, it really works for him, doesn't it?)

His brain panics at the thought and he shoots up, grabs his papers, nearly spills what's left of his drink (vanilla soy latte, of course) onto the already graded ones and finds no better place to store them than between his teeth (at least temporarily, while he wrestles the keys to his bicycle lock from out of his back pocket and wriggles into his elbow-patched jacket and wool coat- it's started to snow in the last half hour, and he's currently cursing the fact that he chose to ride his bike today). The barista keeps on staring at him, and Thorin can feel the embarrassment grow exponentially. He's never been good at interacting with people, even his students terrify him to an extent.

Nonetheless, Thorin manages to make himself presentable, stuffs the papers back into his messenger back and brushes the hair that's escaped his ponytail out of his face.

“All right, let's go.” the other man says, holding the door open for him. The barista takes his paper cup and throws it into the trash right outside. Thorin awkwardly saunters past him and buries himself in his scarf as he glances up at the sky, fat snowflakes landing on his face, melting instantly. He's cold, despite the four layers he's wearing. He frowns at his bicycle, and the other man notices.

“I doubt anyone'll mind if it stays there for a night. The roads are slippery...”

Thorin whips around, hands buried in his pockets. The other's smiling at him, a crooked smile that leans to the left of his face and makes his eyes crinkle in the streetlights. The professor furrows his brow.

“...And I have a car.”

“Oh, I could never-”

“Listen, I wouldn't like to wake up tomorrow and read on the news that you've broken your neck taking a sharp turn at Walnut and 34th Street. Come on, I'll drive you home and you'll tip me double tomorrow to pay me back.”

He's laughing.

Thorin focuses on his feet and swallows.

“I'm Dwalin, by the way.”

He outstretches his hand and Oakenshield stares at it for a second, before feebly shaking it and smiling slightly. He thinks about the cold, and about the way snowflakes dirty his glasses, slippery asphalt and his fifteen year old bicycle. He feels on-edge, all of a sudden, nervous in a way he can't really put his finger on.

(Butterflies flutter somewhere in his stomach, warmth blossoming at the base of his throat and flourishing into his face. It's not a blush, it's something else- a smile, despite the cold, despite himself).

Professor Oakenshield glances one last time at his bike that's slowly but surely getting buried in snow and then shrugs at himself, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

And smiles.

“Sure, why not.”


End file.
